The Crinan Canal by Marian Pallister

The village of Adrishaig is not
Scotland's prettiest, despite the opportunities afforded by a location
beside Loch Gilp. Close to the village's southern end, the A83 main
road crosses a bridge that is probably noticed by only a few of those
driving along the road. And even those
who notice the bridge might well be unaware that as they drive over
it they are crossing the eastern end of the Crinan Canal. The
Crinan Canal is a nine
mile long shortcut between the Firth of Clyde, of which Loch Gilp
is an offshoot of an offshoot, and western Scottish waters, into which
it emerges at Crinan, opposite
the northern end of the Isle of Jura.

Even those who take the trouble to explore the length of a canal whose
beauty belies its eastern end, probably
gain very little understanding of the challenges faced by those who
built it. As we've already said, it is nine miles long, and if you
drive the roads that run closely parallel to it, the landscape appears
fairly level. Appearances can be deceptive. Just about every aspect
of the planning, building and continuous repair and repeated refurbishment
of the Crinan Canal was fraught with difficulties, both natural and
self-inflicted by those responsible for it. As a result the story
of the canal is a remarkably interesting one, and this is the story
told in "The Crinan Canal" by Marian Pallister. Superbly researched
and beautifully written for a non-technical readership, we are presented
with the story of remarkable achievement in the face of adverse circumstances.
And of some truly human failings.

In the modern world we are quite used to infrastructure projects
that are oversold and which underdeliver. It is common to hear about construction works
that take far longer than planned, run into every conceivable problem,
cost far more than forecast, and deliver far less for their investors
than promised. Yet with the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia it
is easy to imagine that these sorts of problems are by-products of
the hugely complex modern world in which we live, and that there was a
time in the past when the giants of engineering always got things
right. Anyone who believed that, in the face of such obvious evidence
to the contrary as the collapse of the first Tay railway bridge, should read Marian
Pallister's excellent book. As should, of course, anyone with an interest
in the history of Argyll, or of the story of the canal itself. In
many ways you can think of the Crinan Canal as the canal equivalent
of the later Tay rail bridge. The major difference, of course, is
that canals can fail with less fatal consequences
than bridges.

The reader is introduced to the reasons for the development of the canal,
and the circumstances that meant that the wrong route was probably
chosen for it. A starring role in the story goes to James Paterson,
a man who had to go to England to see what a canal looked like before
taking up his post as resident engineer to the project; a man
who seemed to have an unhappy knack for making wrong decisions; and
a man arrogant enough to repeatedly dismiss advice from those who
actually knew what they were talking about. He also became a
man desperate enough to try to blame everyone but himself for the
series of problems and failures over a period of years that meant
that the Crinan Canal never realised anything like the returns that
might have reasonably been expected of it: still less the flights
of fancy which induced successive waves of investors to part with
their money. Some books are easy to forget once read. This isn't one
of them. It is the definitive story of the Crinan Canal,
and will be of lasting value because of that, and it also has some
fascinating wider lessons to offer.